Zen and the Art of Tuba Maintenance

[arpthark]

Playing music is a hobby of mine that I am occasionally able to monetize, but over the past year and a half or so (because it takes me SO long for me to finally commit to a project, after fretting and fussing over planning, finances and everything over a multi-month span), I've really gotten interested in instrument repair.

I am definitely not good at it yet -- I am a bonafide hobbyist. But it's really satisfying when I am able to make a good solder joint and clean it up, or take a dent out and have it look halfway decent.

Outside of spending time with my family, when I am able, I love to be able to just go out to my workshop, start a fire in the woodstove, and mess around with stuff. When I have a process in place -- like, disassembling or reassembling rotary valves, or something like that -- it's easy to zone out and let the mind wander. It's nice and sort of relaxing.

I am sure those of you who make instrument repair your profession don't find it as relaxing at this point, especially when you are beating the crap out of stuff, sweating, buffing, all that jazz. But the little stuff, bench stuff, is just oddly meditative. Being able to find a problem, identify it, come up with a solution, and execute it -- that's pretty cool.

That's all I got. Just pontificating.

[Dents Be Gone!]

I agree, guys. This is the way to go.

[arpthark]

I don't have any customers, so there is just one human hemorrhoid I have to deal with -- me!

[DonO.]

I don't have any customers, so there is just one human hemorrhoid I have to deal with -- me!

One thing someone like you could do to monetize your abilities is to buy beat up crap for a little bit of nothing, fix it up, then sell on eBay or Reverb. No repair customers! That would minimize the human hemorrhoid factor!

[arpthark]

I don't have any customers, so there is just one human hemorrhoid I have to deal with -- me!

One thing someone like you could do to monetize your abilities is to buy beat up crap for a little bit of nothing, fix it up, then sell on eBay or Reverb. No repair customers! That would minimize the human hemorrhoid factor!

Oh yeah, I already do a little bit of flipping on here and elsewhere. Currently in process with a 1910s Kruspe 5/4 BBb.

[bloke]

Matt Walters has told me that his job is cleaning spit out of tubas. If you don't drop a tuba on the ground or hit against a door frame, what's probably what's going to be wrong with it is that it's full of spit which basically results in a layer of scale (not dissimilar to limestone) inside. I do enough of that mess with other instruments that I don't like the idea of having to do that to my own without being paid for it, which is why I oil the freaking crap out of my instruments all the time. Scale can't stick to oil.

People who pick up my tubas at my home always say first something about "wow, these valves", and possibly "wow, these slides". I don't do a damn thing to them except oil them every single time I play, and - as most of you know - with absolutely the cheapest oils that will work.

There's very little Hocus Pocus involved in instruments that work well, just as there really isn't very much Hocus Pocus in playing well. When things are clean and they fit, they work.

As far as your zen thing is concerned, I think I get more enjoyment - actually much more enjoyment - out of filling up washes and ravines with rotten branches and trailer loads of thatch. Even building my own instruments - truth be told, as I've already built them in my head - is sort of boring to do it in reality, as it is in super in slow motion.

[Dents Be Gone!]

I agree, guys. This is the way to go.